


The Murderous Portrait: Killan Red

by Yuri_the_Eighth_Demoness



Series: Brushstrokes and Blind Eyes [3]
Category: Brushstrokes and Blind Eyes, Original Work
Genre: F/F, F/M, Five-Chapter Plot, Gen, Love Affair, Love Story, M/M, Macabre, Multi, Murder, Murder Theme, Original Fiction, Original work - Freeform, Other, Short Story, original short story
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:20:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23885140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yuri_the_Eighth_Demoness/pseuds/Yuri_the_Eighth_Demoness
Summary: Killan Red's anger should have been enough when it was borne into this world. But in his quest for eternal vengeance against those who stole everything from him, what has he --and will be-- willing to risk in order to achieve the ultimate goal?Would he sacrifice even the two whom he considers as family?Meet Eth Kiran Rubi, the breathing portrait whose strange impulse compels it...to murder.
Relationships: Herlequin/Killan Red Archeas (Original), Yill Gothvried/Psalterine Archeas (Original)
Series: Brushstrokes and Blind Eyes [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1289876
Kudos: 1





	The Murderous Portrait: Killan Red

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Notes** : This story's Sister tale is found here: [The Name of a Prayer: Psalterine](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17936360/chapters/42355457)
> 
> * * *

There was no being like him. Not in the known natural world, nor the one where Sah dominates. Yet it was also true that he was not the only one of /his kind/. There were two others, a male and a female. He calls them his siblings, but none can say they are. They are his Family, something he would fight to the death to protect, inspiring in him an emotion so powerful it was to be the only emotion he’ll ever know since his early days. 

For in the beginning there was only him. And they. And he would rather keep it that way...

/He/ was dreaming again.

When he'd opened his mismatched eyes to reality, it was nightfall once again, dark in the gallery where he hung among the other _objets-de-art_. Perhaps the most curious, the most _accursed_ among the Museum's Macabre Collection.

He was known as Eth Kiran Rubi, or Killan Red, the painting that's believed to curse whichever house he belonged to. He comes to life, you see, and kills to feed his surreal vividness, the life in his form as it appears within the confines of his Frame, entwined with so much scarlet silk that the painted fabric appeared to move, drifting along his naked contours in a sea of blood.

He was crucified in its midst, in the middle of a webbing of barbed wires that erupted from his back like massive wings, capturing his arms, his wrists, his ankles.

A moving art that murdered. Or so was said.

Mere rumours and speculations, true, but that even renders the curators afraid of _him_...

By estimates, he would be some thirteen or fourteen years of age now. Miraculous in the respect that he seemed to grow with time, a small painting of a child when he was first discovered but had matured like a normal human being would throughout the course of a few years. There was a record of it, witness accounts. But of course this was true. He was alive after all, the living stuff of actual nightmares.

He prowls the surrounding areas and districts along the streets leading to the very Museum where he was housed, rarely caught when he stepped out to hunta. Rarely because those that _do_ catch him assuredly end up dead on some gutter.

That or their bodies were never found.

"Psarteru…Kirian..."

He could not sense them. It was the curse of who they are. As his bare feet touched the carpet once more tonight, making an assumption as to where his siblings might be.

One of them was certainly closer to him than the other, the said other taking at least a city's travel to get to. An annoyance in itself. For his sister to not want to leave her life there for them. He hated it then.

Like the dragging lengthy drape of a cape wound around his pelvices, and the barbed wires anchoring his very marrow to his prison, ghastly with its backdrop of blood because that was what he was, a drenched, gruesome mess. A Wraith of apathy and contradicting pains with such a murderous drive.

* * *

But had he been like this before?

Contrary to his sister, he actually recalls the _purpose_ as to why he came to be. Everything to him was crystal clear, the details obvious, unlike Psalterine who'd only been dancing on the fringes of her memories.

Thus, he recalled the tragedy, the fire, the death that seemed all too endless. To his mismatched eyes, that was reason alone. For him to likewise develop a hate towards this world for it.

He loathed those that did them wrong. He despised the rest that tore them apart. Someday, he vowed that they should pay for it in full. Those that touched the Family with their dirty hands.

He never forgets.

He never forgives.

* * *

But was he no less despicable?

As he looked at his bloodied hands, could he even call himself innocent?

Did he not destroy his own family in that one moment when he had been weak?

As he stared, down at his two wide-eyed siblings on the night they first met. As he saw only pain.

No.

He had made the right choice.

* * *

For if he'd left Killian like that, he would have ended up dead. And Psalterine, poor Psalterine, could have ended up in madness.

That night was horrific. The events that led him to steal his own loved ones' memories, they were things that he himself could not forget, should never forget, yet he cannot allow his siblings to suffer.

They were not built for this damnation unlike he was.

And for the mission that he needed to accomplish.

* * *

He just had to get out of here, far from the four corners of this wretched place. Although compared to previous haunts, he could say this was better accommodation.

He'd been tarried into a den of thieves, a house of whores, and that cursed vault. How can he forget that? The nights when his sister sat vigil outside of it, unable to get in, likewise get him out.

"I miss you," he could hear her say often, whispered to him, as she pressed her forehead upon the cold metal that stopped her Sah. Whereupon, at the other side, he'd likewise lean in, feeling her sadness, feeling her pain, knowing her tears.

She'd not suffered the knowledge of the past, this was true, he made certain of it. But she went through hell in another way. She has freedom, yet not Killian...never Killan Red.

It made the latter only angrier.

* * *

Enough of a grudge that when he hunted, he carried the emotion with him. As he roamed in search of his next kill.

No one person was ever treated with considerations. Their status, their own sob stories were unimportant. He took what he needed from them without a shred of remorse. There were no regrets.

"Is this even the place?"

A soul has wandered. He knew the scent. A thief. Coming to the Museum this late an hour to pillage, unaware of what lurks in its dark.

Here he comes, seeking treasures along the corridors, smart to have evaded guards and surveillance but...not a wraith.

Killan Red anchored himself to the ceiling, arms wrapped in the wires that held him in place within his Frame, mismatched eyes, one of cold winter, the other, a blazing fire, watching the other make his move. Cautiously picking through the displays and scattered portraits unhung. It was a new wing, incomplete. Safe from getting caught perhaps but was it truly?

"Who's there!?"

A rustle. He could feel the man's heart beating, the ragged breath. He was feeling spooked even at the barest sound.

Killan Red smiled. Easy prey. As he moved quietly from arch to vaulted arch trailing his quarry.

Then…he descended!

Like the Spider that he was. He dropped upon the thief in a shroud of barbs, impaling the man in many places, plummeting a single line down that throat.

" _'Death comes quick to those unwittingly in search of it'_ ," he narrated some prose Killian, his blind brother, has quoted once. " _'And Death, indiscriminate, embraces anyone who comes.'_ "

The look of terror was the same. Sometimes, there was a struggle, sometimes, if he allowed it, a desperate plea. As the barbed probe reached within the body, injecting itself into every vein, every organ that it can worm its way into, like a tree taking root.

A most painful way to die. The tearing spreads like this searing heat as the body chokes, gasps and convulses, only for the wires to finally break through and find their way out again.

Taking the blood with them as life fades, leaving Killan with this resource. Not precious, but it has its uses. As he drains and consecrates the fluid to become bottles of paint, a deep scarlet unlike any existing pigment.

He takes it all, until the person is reduced to a husk, a shell he'd discard in an obvious spot where the morning will find it.

Then the citizens of the city, reading of it in the news, shall say it again: "The cursed painting has once more taken a life.

"It will take again."


End file.
